I've been loving my juice bottle rigs recently because they're extra compact, really solid (the soda bottles used to crush a bit) and they keep the camera pointed really straight down in the bottle (soda bottles can allow the camera to slide to one side during flight sometimes).
However, Mathew and Stewart seemed a little skeptical after the barnraising when my rig shook a bit on kite flights -- and I realized the attachment point is a bit too close to the center of mass of the rig, causing a certain jumpiness. This could be why we had some blurriness in the Tidmarsh Farms flights on Saturday. I tried tying another point onto the tail to make a kind of inverted Y-shape, and it seems to stabilize things quite a bit.
This rig is not meant to be the best ever -- just the fastest & simplest to make, and the most foolproof. I'm extra happy with it now that the wobble is likely to be much reduced. Check out the video:
1 Comments
I don't think I get same back and forth movement you were getting because my wind fins are much lighter, made from strips of the bottle and not the thick bottom, but I still get a little. the second line you added seems to make a big difference though. I like it!
I'll try adding another point to my standard rig, right now I use two loops around the neck of the bottle, one at the front of the neck and one at the back. Two is much, much better than one. They are looped all the way around the neck, and then held in place with a rubber band so they don't slide around (picture below)
Inside the bottle, I use four rubber bands on the harness to hold the camera in place-- but I'm using a soda bottle, your Ocean Spray bottle aligns the camera to that little ridge, and you don't need as much pressure to hold it in place. I really think the rubber bands around the camera are a lot nicer than tape and string-- no tape residue, and extra shock protection.
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